Coronal hole faces Earth

Saturday, 21 October 2017 08:57 UTC

Coronal hole faces Earth

A large southern extension of the northern hemisphere polar coronal hole is facing Earth today.

An enhanced solar wind stream flowing from this coronal hole could arrive in about 3 days from now and minor to moderate G1/G2 geomagnetic storm conditions are likely on Tuesday, 24 October.

This coronal hole is a familiar solar feature that has been around for months now. The solar wind stream caused moderate G2 geomagnetic storm conditions on 27 September and strong G3 geomagnetic storm conditions on 28 September.

The coronal hole did shrink in size compared to the previous rotation so we do not expect the same kind of storm conditions this time around but we should still see a decent solar wind enhancement at our planet when the solar wind stream arrives.

Any mentioned solar flare in this article has a scaling factor applied by the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), the reported solar flares are 42% smaller than for the science quality data. The scaling factor has been removed from our archived solar flare data to reflect the true physical units.

Thank you for reading this article! Did you have any trouble with the technical terms used in this article? Our help section is the place to be where you can find in-depth articles, a FAQ and a list with common abbreviations. Still puzzled? Just post on our forum where we will help you the best we can! Never want to miss out on a space weather event or one of our news articles again? Subscribe to our mailing list, follow us on Twitter and Facebook and download the SpaceWeatherLive app for Android and iOS!

Latest news

Support SpaceWeatherLive.com!

A lot of people come to SpaceWeatherLive to follow the Sun's activity or if there is aurora to be seen, but with more traffic comes higher server costs. Consider a donation if you enjoy SpaceWeatherLive so we can keep the website online!

SpaceWeatherLive Pro
Support SpaceWeatherLive with our merchandise
Check out our merchandise

Latest alerts

Get instant alerts!

Space weather facts

Last X-flare2024/12/08X2.2
Last M-flare2024/12/22M1.0
Last geomagnetic storm2024/12/17Kp5+ (G1)
Spotless days
Last spotless day2022/06/08
Monthly mean Sunspot Number
November 2024152.5 -13.9
December 2024103.3 -49.2
Last 30 days115.4 -40.8

This day in history*

Solar flares
11999M7.71
22013M4.82
32023M3.33
42013M2.8
51999M2.61
DstG
11982-101G3
22014-71G1
32001-59
41987-59
51989-58G1
*since 1994

Social networks